Twice rescued

The two terracotta figures depicting playful reclining putto-babies were acquired by a famous collector Oscar Heinauer in Paris in 1882, who then presented them to the Berlin Museums. The pose of one of them (leaning on the arm) mirrors the drawing from a sketch album of Verrocchio's workshop (which is now in the Louvre, Paris). There are sculptural replications of the same scene in a smaller size made of bronze (the Metropolitan Museum, New York), marble (the De Young Museum, San Francisco), and glazed terracotta (New York, private collection). In addition, it is possible to trace the outline of this figure in paintings. For example, Albrecht Dürer, who visited Venice in 1506, used it as a pose for the Infant Christ ("Madonna with a pear", 1516, Vienna, the Museum of Art History). The extant list of items from Verrocchio's workshop includes two braccio-long (58.36 cm) terracotta figures of laying boys. It allowed researchers to identify them as the figures from the Berlin collection and attribute them to different students of the artist. Linda Pisani, the author of a recent (2007) monograph about Francesco di Simone Ferrucci (1473-1497), attributes the putto figures to the sculptor, assuming also the possibility of his assistant Sandro di Marco's involvement, and dates them to 1486-87. It should be noted that the figure leaning on the left arm lacks the elaboration and polish and is clearly made as a "mirror" replication of the first figure.